Sister City Exchange Program

I have written before about the exchange program between Esslingen, Germany and Sheboygan, Wisconsin USA - here, here, and here, for example.

This exchange program means the world to me. I am who I am because of it. My husband and I met through it 32 years ago. This past Wednesday was our 12^th anniversary (we were friends for 20 years first!). I’d planned to write this blog post that day to celebrate both the exchange program and our anniversary, but as sometimes happens, the day had other plans for me.

Glengorm Castle, Isle of Mull
Scotland, 2006

My hometown of Sheboygan and my favorite town in the world, Esslingen, are sister cities (Partnerstädte). The exchange program began in 1970, and we have had around 300 students participate from both towns in the years since then. My year was 1986, and M participated a couple of years later. For me the experience was life-changing.

It's funny how, nearing age 50, you can look back and see where your seemingly insignificant choices influenced the rest of your life.

• If my brother had not done the exchange in 1983, I might not have decided to take German.
• If I had not taken German in school, I could not have applied for the exchange.
• If I had not applied for the exchange, I would not have been accepted.
• If I had not been accepted, I would not have met my wonderful host family, my now-Schwiegermutter or my husband.
• If I had not had such a fabulous host family, I would not have loved my experience so much.

[And if I had not met my husband, I would not be living very happily with him in Germany with enough free time to have given back to the exchange program! That's another, more private branch of this story.]

• If I had not loved the experience so much, I would not have been motivated to study German in college.
• If I had not studied German in college, I would not have been able to teach German in the US.
• If I had not taught German in the US for 13 years, I would not have been hired to teach Syrian and Eritrean refugees in Germany in 2016.
• If I had not been able to teach that group of Syrian and Eritrean refugees, I would have missed the most rewarding teaching experience of my life.

part of the group I still refer to as "my dream team"

• If I had missed that opportunity, my passion for teaching would not have been renewed.
• If my passion for teaching had not been renewed, I wouldn’t have met the rest of the students I have had here since then from Syria, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bulgaria, Scotland, Argentina, Chile, Japan, Tanzania, Ukraine, the Dominican Republic, Switzerland, Turkey, Denmark, Hungary, and Poland.

As it turns out, there have been very few decisions during my life that weren’t in some way related to the exchange or stemming from it. I chose my daughter’s name because it is my exchange partner’s name, and I made sure my son’s name was also easily pronounced in both English and German. I exposed my kids to German as they were growing up by reading German children's books to them and teaching them German children's songs. In 2008 the kids and I welcomed a girl from Esslingen into our home for the summer (she was my co-chaperone on our trip this year to Berlin!). Through art and décor, Esslingen has been in every room of every house I have ever owned.

I will always be grateful to the organizations and individuals that brought these two towns together and gave life to the exchange program. I owe my profession, many life choices, my marriage, and much of my happiness to this exchange.

Four Days in Berlin

Once a year I take the exchange students from my hometown, who are spending 5 1/2 months in Esslingen, to Berlin for four days. When I did the exchange back in 1986, the dear lady who is now my Schwiegermutter was the chaperone - and she chaperoned the trip for something like 30 years! She has happily passed the responsibility to me, and as a result I keep becoming more familiar with the nation's capital. And it's growing on me! This year my co-chaperone was Sophie, who lived with my kids and me in Wisconsin for eight weeks in 2008.

We have a full plan and start each day at 9:00, after coffee and breakfast at the hotel. I build in some free time for the kids during the day and/or evening, partly because I need some as well, and we do a lot of walking. But let me start from the beginning.

Day 1

We fly into Tegel, and near Gate 1 I find the BerlinWelcomeCard booth and buy a 72-hour ticket for each of us. This covers all transportation for exactly 72 hours from the time you punch the card at your first use. Quite a few museums and activities provide discounts when you show them your card, and it pays for itself rather quickly.

The 72-hour ticket for zones A&B costs €28,90 (2018). A Tagesticket for zones A&B costs €7,00, and we would have had to buy four of them per person for Monday through Thursday - so €28,00 per person. With the BerlinWelcomeCard we got discounts usually around 25% for things like our bike tour, several museums, the Berliner Dom, and the Berlin Underworld tour. For us, the WelcomeCard is the better deal, not only because we didn't have the hassle each morning of having to buy 5 Tagestickets.

From Tegel we get Bus 109 - which departs every ten minutes - into the city. Our hotel is on Bleibtreustraße, which is conveniently one of the stops for Bus 109. This works well for arrival and departure - as long as we get on the right bus. More on that later.

We've stayed for three years in a row at Kurfürst Hotel Pension and I have been happy there every time. It's modest and there is no air conditioning, but it is a great location - just off the Ku'Damm and not far from the Uhlandstraße Endstation of the U1 line.

After checking in we go together to the next street where there are two Supermärkte, and we buy snacks for when we're in our rooms and drinks for the road.

This year we then went straight to the U-Bahn and navigated our way to the Brandenburger Tor, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Reichstag, and in search of ice cream.

The memorial to the Sinti and Roma murdered during the Holocaust is also near the Reichstag.

After sight-seeing we walked toward Friedrichstraße where there are plenty of places to eat as well as Dussmann, which is a bookstore galore open until 23:00.

My challenge - given to me by my daughter after the year I ate at Italian restaurants nearly every dinner - is to never eat the same cuisine twice while in Berlin. Sophie and I started at a Persian restaurant called Shan's Bistro across the street from the Gendarmenmarkt. Our meals were delicious!

(This is the part where I don't tell you the kids ate at McDonald's their first night in Berlin.)

We were tired and sweaty enough to return to the hotel by 10:00 for refreshing showers and sleep.

Day 2

On Tuesday we headed toward the Nikolaiviertel to see what I call "the pretty part of Berlin" and wait for our bike tour to start at 10:24. This is the second year I've done this with kids, and it was a highlight! You can see so much more on a bike than on foot, and with a guide who is either a native of Berlin or a Berlin enthusiast, you can learn a whole lot you wouldn't otherwise know. There are dozens of bike tour companies, and I randomly selected this one last year. I have no reason to try anyone else because the students and I have liked the tours and the guides. It's a 3-hour tour and costs €16 for adults and €13 for students with the BerlinWelcomeCard.

After the bike tour I took them to Alexanderplatz and gave them free time for lunch. Sophie, one of the students, and I ate at Vapiano, an Italian restaurant where they cook your meal while you watch. These restaurants get mixed reviews, but I like them. I don't know how many are in Berlin, but I've eaten at three different Vapianos!

We didn't go up the Fernsehturm this year or last because it's quite expensive, and I have found an alternative for a "view from above" that is much more reasonable. The students this year found an even better one, which somehow I've been missing - climbing up the dome of the Berliner Dom! We go into this cathedral every year, and once the entrance fee is paid, you already have access to the cupola. The students said it was worth the climb, and it became even more so when I discovered the Französischer Dom on the Gendarmenmarkt was closed for renovations.

From there we walked toward the Humboldt Universität and found the book burning memorial on Bebelsplatz.

We then walked to Gendarmenmarkt and found the fancy chocolate shop, Fassbender & Rausch. Don't miss this stop, if only to see the chocolate sculptures of Berlin's Sehenswürdigkeiten.

Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche
made of chocolate and cookies

The one problem I have in Berlin is coming up with things to keep the students occupied in the evenings. Attractions and many stores tend to close by 18:00 (6:00 p.m.), and the crazies start coming out by 21:30. Sophie had the idea to go to Potsdamerplatz and set them loose in the Berlin Mall, which is open until 21:00. That allowed them time to get something to eat and do a little shopping, while Sophie and I explored and then had ice cream for dinner.

Day 3

This day started with a dash to the Gesundbrunnen U-/S-Bahn station, where we located Berliner Unterwelten and bought tickets for the first English tour of a WWII bunker at 11:00. You can't book these tours online or by phone; on the day you want the tour you have to show up and stand in line. Get there around 10:00 and you'll have your pick of the tours. During the 45-minute wait for the start, we went to the nearby Kaufland for a snack and drinks. 

TIP: It's always better to buy water at a Supermarkt rather than at tourist stores and stands - a small one costs €0,89 rather than €2,50. If you only see packages of 6 bottles, know that in Germany you may unwrap the package and take one bottle instead of all six. An even better idea is to buy one bottle on your first day and fill it up in your hotel sink each morning. The tap water in Germany is fine to drink and you use less plastic!

The tour ("Dunkle Welten") was very interesting and I took lots of notes, but we were not allowed to take pictures. They rotate their tours each day, so look ahead for the day you plan to go in order to see what they'll have available. I suspect they are all interesting!

After the 90-minute tour we walked to Bernauerstraße to stroll along a stretch where the Berliner Mauer was, and to stop in the Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer, which is a small museum. This museum does not charge admission, and there is a platform one can climb up to look over a replica of the wall, death strip, and guard tower. Visitors can also see videos of eye witnesses talking about when the wall was first built as well as explanations of escape attempts.

The stone slabs show where tunnels had been dug
for people trying to escape from East to West.
(This view is looking from the point of the wall into the former East.)

We then took the S-Bahn to Hackischer Markt, where I treated them to lunch at Barcomi's Deli. Which cuisine is this? American! But good American, not fast food. Here they could order things they haven't seen in their 4+ months in Germany: Reuben sandwich, egg/tuna/chicken salad, grilled cheese, bagels & cream cheese, apple pie, pecan pie, devil's food cake, brownies, muffins, cheesecake... I have made it a tradition to eat here each time I come to Berlin.

German teachers love this kind of street art.
It's a list of adjective opposites - a great vocabulary exercise
in the first Hinterhof on the way to Barcomi's.

Cynthia Barcomi's baked treats

They had more free time to explore the Hackische Höfe - exclusive and quaint boutiques and shops in a maze of Hinterhöfe or courtyards - and the Hackischer Markt. Apparently the most interesting thing the boys saw was a man walking casually toward where they were sitting and peeing on a grassy spot. One boy's shock and awe as he told me the story revealed his small-midwestern-town sensitivities. Life in the big city, lads... ;-)

We made the obligatory stop at Checkpoint Charlie and I took the kids' photo with the "soldiers" standing there holding the American flag. (Our bike tour guide last year told us they are strippers by night, and the way one of them was behaving, I can believe it.) I don't want to be sassy, though, because they gave us a student discount on the photos (€1 each instead of €3).

From there we went to one of the top highlights of the trip - an escape room! This is a fun activity to add into a trip that is mostly about learning. I'd signed us up weeks in advance for the latest time slot of the Illuminati room. The group got locked into a room arranged like a chapel, and we had 60 minutes to search for clues that would finally solve the mystery and unlock the door. Amazingly we succeeded - with 30 seconds to spare! We worked well as a team and had a great time. Obviously we couldn't take photos, nor will I reveal any of the secrets. But if I get everyone's permission, I'll post our "We did it!" photo.

Permission granted! Escape Room WIN!!

Day 4

On our last morning we usually go The Story of Berlin museum and cold war bunker, which is very close to our hotel. This year I gave the students the choice between that and the Topography of Terror, which is an open-air museum at the former site of the Gestapo headquarters, and they chose the latter. This museum is free of charge, and although they said it was interesting and worth a visit, they didn't need more than an hour. It's very heavy - descriptions of arrests, interrogations, torture, beatings... But inside there is also a section about resistance against the regime, mentioning groups such as die Weiße Rose (the White Rose).

We took the S-Bahn back to the Ku'Damm and got out at Wittenbergplatz. I pointed them toward the KaDeWe (largest department store in mainland Europe) and the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche, the bombed-out church left after WWII as a reminder of the devastation of war. They had time to explore at will until our meeting time back at the hotel, and Sophie and I went in search of the memorial at Breitscheidplatz where a terrorist drove a semi into the Christmas market in 2016, killing 12 people.

The symbolism of the golden crack or tear in the pavement is worth a read. (See here for an article in German.)

Although we had checked out in the morning, the receptionist allowed us to store our suitcases behind the desk until we needed to catch our bus. We collected our bags and walked the short distance to our bus stop. When the bus arrived we hopped on, but after about 4 stops I realized I didn't recognize anything we were passing. WRONG BUS! (Many buses stop at Bleibtreustraße, and I didn't bother to double-check the number. Oops!) A woman sitting next to Sophie told her where we could get off and then get a connection to the right bus, and when we got off and were a little discombobulated despite her help, another woman rescued us and showed us where to go. There really are friendly and helpful people all over - even in the big city.

We made it back to Tegel in plenty of time because I always plan in extra time for mistakes and detours. Why we landed in Zürich and took a bus to Stuttgart in the middle of the night rather than landing in Stuttgart at 19:25 as was our travel plan is fodder for another blog post.

Thus endeth this year's Berlinreise!

P.S. A tip for teachers: I have a box of 100 question cards for the U.S. Citizenship test, which my daughter gave me for Christmas this year. I brought those along and always had a handful in my backpack. During waiting times and on the S-Bahn or U-Bahn, I took the cards out and quizzed the kids to pass the time. They enjoyed the challenge! Once on the U-Bahn I noticed a couple leaning over to have a look at each question, so I made a point of turning it so they could see clearly, too. They were from Portugal and also enjoyed the activity! They even knew an answer or two that stumped the students.

Youthful Naïveté

Each year for the past three years I have taught a two-week "crash course" for American students from my hometown in Wisconsin who come to Esslingen, Germany for a 5.5-month exchange. At best they have learned a little bit of German (two of the five high schools in their area offer part-time German), but each year there are between one and three who have had no German at all. After their two weeks with me, they attend one of the four Gymnasien in Esslingen. A Gymnasium is a college-prep high school.

In the interest of protecting the privacy of minors,
I will not show their faces.

What I try to do in those two weeks is teach them some basics of the language, lots of basic conversation, questions they’ll be asked and the answers they can give. We have four hours a day together, and we start out in the classroom (at the VHS – community college). After roughly two hours we head into town for some hands-on learning. Typical activities they carry out in German are:

• a tour of the historical Altstadt (this I do mainly in English)
• purchasing train and bus tickets (at a counter and at a machine)
• navigating the S-Bahn system to get to another city, such as Stuttgart
• interviewing a native speaker
• ordering coffee and a snack at a local café
• a Foto-Schnitzeljagd (scavenger hunt), having to ask locals for help finding things

This year I faced a few situations I had not in the previous years. I am not writing about this to gripe about the students or shame them (they are very pleasant and likeable!) but rather to show how very important it is to be prepared for travel in a foreign country.

admiring Esslingen's altes Rathaus

The students had already been in Germany (or skiing with their host family in Austria) for about a week before our class started. From their families they had already learned the importance of not crossing an intersection when the Ampelmännchen is red! This was especially brilliant at the moment where I was not thinking and stepped out into the road. There were no cars in sight and few people about, but that is no excuse. I do as the Germans do in my day-to-day life: wait for green whether cars are coming or not. But for whatever reason I had a moment of absent-mindedness. Thank heavens one of the students (they were behind me and had dutifully stopped) half-shouted, “That’s illegal!” I leapt back to the sidewalk, hopefully appropriately shame-faced. I was pleased that they did what they were supposed to do rather than just blindly following me into the street!  Teachers make mistakes, too, and the students acted appropriately.

On a different day, we were gathered together in a public area discussing the day’s activity. I noticed peripherally two men walking together slowly in the area near us, who kept looking in our direction. They were probably simply waiting for a store to open, and I did not need to act because they never got very close to any of my students. At one point, though, two of my students had stepped a bit away from us and I saw one of them from the back sort of “puff up his shoulders” while facing the two men. I called them back, said it was time to go, and we went off on our excursion. Later I told the student what I’d noticed and asked if I interpreted it correctly, that he’d tried a “stand-off” with those strangers. Short answer: yes. He said they’d made eye contact, and he “wasn’t going to just look away.” I said if it happens again that is exactly what he will do – look and/or walk away.

And then I said something to them that my host father said to me 32 years ago: “You are not in Sheboygan anymore.” Frankly, I don’t think that’s a wise thing to do no matter where you are, but in a country where you cannot rely on your language to get yourself out of a sticky situation, you must do everything you can to avoid sticky situations. I did not like what the men were doing – lingering around us and watching us – but they were not really doing anything wrong. Had they spoken to or threatened my students I would have put myself between them and tried to diffuse the situation and sent one of them for help if necessary.  I hope I was very clear about the fact that my student endangered all of us by one simple action (eye contact) and body language. He meant no harm, but he could have caused a serious situation.

at the Stadtbibliothek in Stuttgart
Architect: Eun Young Yi

The next day at the start of our excursion we were all standing – and shivering – on the train platform waiting for our S-Bahn. One of the students jokingly jumped at another one of them to startle him/her, and the other student’s back was toward the train track. He was standing a safe distance from the edge and no train was coming. But that is absolutely not ok, and during my scolding, I told them German children learn not to do things like that when they are six (these students are 15 and 16). Again, I can only hope they believe me.

Trust me, this is not the place to screw around.

The problem here is that American kids (at least those who do not live in big cities) have no experience with situations like these. They are driven everywhere by their or their friends' parents, they have little to no independence, if they take a field trip with their class a bus is hired... In Germany school classes take field trips using trains, and even if their parents haven’t taught them how to behave while standing on the platform, their grade school teachers have.

Germany/Europe is not dangerous! But you have to know how to behave in order to stay safe. Do not cross against the light in Germany. Do not provoke or engage strangers in any way except to offer your help if you see someone who seems to need it – and then still be careful and cautious. Do not fool around on a train platform or near a street. Do not be afraid, but be aware! Be very aware and take note of everything around you. Constantly.

in the Esslinger Rathaus, before being officially greeted by
a representative from the Stadt Esslingen

To end with something that is not connected to these students but definitely to the topic, when I returned home at the end of the two weeks, I was waiting dutifully at a crossing at the Busbahnhof (bus station). Two teenage boys, who were apparently too cool to wait for green like the rest of us, ambled across the street seemingly without a care in the world. The first boy reached the other side, but the second boy lagged behind (again, too cool to hurry) as a bus barreled toward him. They had both clearly seen the bus. The bus driver did not brake. The 2^nd boy hesitated a split second and then leapt backwards. Had he decided to dash forward or stay put, he would be in a hospital or morgue right now. In that flash of an instance, I thought I was going to see a boy get killed. In Germany, do not cross against the light!

Before you travel to a foreign country, get some advice about potential dangers from travel books, locals, or people who have traveled there before. I cannot stress this enough.

Meine Rede / My Speech

As I wrote recently, my hometown Sheboygan, Wisconsin and the city of Esslingen, Germany are celebrating this year their 50th anniversary of city partnership. Since 1967 the two towns have been sister cities, and the high school exchange program started in 1970. The current mayor of Sheboygan, Mike Vandersteen, recently wrote an article for the Sheboygan Press about the beginnings of this city partnership. A delegation from Sheboygan came to Esslingen this week (roughly 30 people), and a full program was arranged for them including some tours, a day trip, and an afternoon with Esslingen's Feuerwehr (Volunteer Fire Department).

I was asked several months ago if I would be willing to give a speech on the occasion of the celebration, which was held last night in Esslingen. I agreed and spent the time since then writing, discarding drafts, rewriting, and editing. The last changes were made on the train ride to Esslingen yesterday.

I thought it would be ok to put my speech on my blog, since quite a few people came up to me afterward and said they enjoyed it. It was more personal than the other two speeches of the evening (the Oberbürgermeister of Esslingen and the mayor of Sheboygan spoke first), so perhaps it struck people differently. I delivered the speech in German, but a written English translation was provided for those in the crowd who didn't speak German.

Here is my speech (if you're interested in the English translation, let me know).

My Denglish Life, Thanks to the Sheboygan-Esslingen Austausch

Guten Abend Herr Doktor Zieger, Mayor Mike Vandersteen, liebe Gäste aus Sheboygan und Esslingen, meine Damen und Herren, Mom und Dad... Vielen Dank für diese Gelegenheit, über den Sheboygan-Esslingen Austausch und Städtepartnerschaft zu sprechen. Außer Mutter zu werden hatte nichts mein Leben so stark beeinflusst wie dieser Austausch. Für die Gäste, die mich nicht kennen, ich bin B.K.H., ich komme aus Sheboygan, und ich habe 1986 an dem Austausch teilgenommen. Ich wohne seit fast fünf Jahren in Deutschland. Heute ist besonders schön für mich, denn alle meine Eltern sind hier: meine echten Eltern aus Sheboygan, A. und J.K., meine Gastmutter, A.G., und meine Schwiegermutter, P.H. Ohne sie würde ich heute nicht hier stehen.

Mein Aufenthalt in Esslingen war unglaublich wunderbar, mit Höhen und Tiefen. Meine Gastfamilie hat mir viel von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz gezeigt, und ich habe viel über mich selbst gelernt. Die Welt sah damals ganz anders aus - stellen Sie sich vor: keine Internet, keine E-Mail, keine Handys, kein Skype oder Facebook und keine digitale Kameras. Ich habe meiner Familie und Freunden in Sheboygan Briefe und Postkarten geschickt - und bekam 14 Tage später eine Antwort. Ah...those were the days!

Meine Beziehung zu meiner Gastfamilie war nicht immer problemlos - genau wie bei einer echten Familie. Meine Gastschwester und ich waren nicht immer die besten Freunde. Seitdem sind wir aber eng befreundet. Übrigens, sie hat einen Amerikaner geheiratet und wohnt seit 22 Jahren mit ihren Kindern in Madison, die Hauptstadt von Wisconsin - 180km von  Sheboygan entfernt!

Ich hatte ein Tagebuch, in dem ich fast jeden Tag geschrieben hatte, und ich habe es immer noch. Deswegen weiß ich, dass ich meinen Mann, M, am 23. April '86 zum ersten Mal getroffen habe - im Palmscher Bau [ein Restaurant in Esslingen]! Er war mit seiner Mutter zum Schülertreffen mitgekommen und freute sich eigentlich nur auf sein Eis. Damals hatten wir keine Ahnung, dass wir für einander bestimmt waren, und 2006 auf einer Insel in Schottland heiraten würden.

Als ich nach dem Austausch nach Hause geflogen bin wusste ich, dass ich zurückkommen musste. Khalil Gibran hat genau das geschrieben, was in meinem Herzen war: "Wie soll ich in Frieden und ohne Trauer gehen? Zu viel von meinem Geist habe ich in diesen Straßen verströmt. Nicht ohne Wunde im Geist werde ich diese Stadt verlassen...Es ist kein Gewand, das ich heute ablege, sondern eine Haut, die ich mir mit eigenen Händen abreiße."

Nach dem Austausch lernte ich weiter Deutsch, und Deutsch war auch mein Nebenfach an der Uni. Ich unterrichtete in Wisconsin 16 Jahre Deutsch und Englisch, und in diesen Jahren war ich 20 Mal in Esslingen zu Besuch - manchmal mit meinen Kindern oder Eltern, manchmal alleine, manchmal mit Schülern. Jedes Mal wenn jemand mich nach Esslingen gefahren hat, war es wie im Film: Der Blick auf Esslingen und die Burg wenn man von Festo runterfährt wurde und wird nie langweilig.

Seit 2012 wohne ich mit M in Horb am Neckar. Obwohl das keine schwierige Umstellung für mich war, musste ich doch einiges lernen. Das Leben in Deutschland ist nicht wie das Leben in Wisconsin. Was müssen wir Ausländer und Austauschschüler lernen, um gut und komfortabel im Schwabenland zu leben?

• Mülltrennung: Biomüll, Restmüll, Altpapier, Glas-Recycling und Pfand
• Kehrwoche
• Fasnet
• Mittagsruhe, Sonntagsruhe, Nachtruhe, und stille Feiertage
• täglich Lüften
• Warte, wenn das Ampelmännchen rot ist!
• Sei pünktlich!

Ich habe mir den Namen "Nei'gschmeckte" wahrscheinlich noch nicht verdient, aber das ist nun alles völlig normal für mich, und ich habe mehr Schwierigkeiten, wenn ich wieder in Sheboygan bin! Werfe ich wirklich Batterien in den Mülleimer?? Es gibt keine Zugverbindung zwischen Sheboygan und Milwaukee?? Und Heiligsblechle, fahren die aber langsam!!

Letzes Jahr habe ich angefangen, Integrationskurse zu unterrichten. Als Ausländerin helfe ich nun anderen Ausländern und Flüchtlingen Deutsch zu lernen und deutsche Politik und Geschichte zu verstehen. Seit zwei Jahren komme ich im Februar für zwei Wochen nach Esslingen, um bei den Austauschschülern aus Sheboygan Deutschunterricht zu geben. Alles, was ich in meinem Berufsleben gemacht hatte, hat mich auf das vorbereitet, was ich jetzt tue. Und das hat alles mit diesem Austausch zwischen Sheboygan und Esslingen angefangen.

Meine Vorfahren sind 1853 aus einem kleinen Dorf bei Pforzheim nach Sheboygan ausgewandert. Sie waren Immigranten in einem fremden Land, so wie ich jetzt. Vielleicht deswegen hatte ich das Gefühl schon vor 31 Jahren, dass ich nach Esslingen gehöre. Das ist eine Familiengeschichte, die vor 164 Jahren begonnen hat - und für mich persönlich mit diesem Austausch. hier schließt sich der Kreis, und ich bin zurück zu meinen Wurzeln gekommen. Das war nur durch diese Sheboygan-Esslingen Städtpartnerschaft und Austausch möglich gewesen.

Aus tiefstem Herzen sage ich vielen, vielen Dank!
*****

I was so blinking nervous - there were a lot of people there, and a lot of people I knew! But I made it through and am glad I didn't chicken out.

Then & Now: Exchange Programs

When I was 17 and in 11th grade, I left home for six months to participate in an international exchange program. The exchange was between my hometown (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) and its sister city (Esslingen, Germany) and organized through People to People International. The program was designed so that students from Esslingen came to Sheboygan in July for six months and returned home for Christmas, and in February the Sheboygan students flew to Esslingen for six months. The foreign students attended school and lived with their partner's family in a homestay arrangement.

In June of this year the two cities will celebrate their Golden Anniversary - 50 years of partnership. The exchange began three years later, in 1970. For the next 32 years the exchange program flourished with students on both sides of the ocean. Not every exchange was perfect, but all-in-all there was great success throughout the years. Since then there were years here and there where no students applied from Sheboygan, so the program floundered a bit.

Recently some life was breathed back into the exchange, and now that I'm living here I'm involved in the program from an organizer assistant's standpoint. Namely, I spend two weeks in Esslingen near the beginning of the Americans' stay to help them boost their German skills before they head off to the Gymnasium. I also am one of the chaperones who take them on a 3-day trip to Berlin and remain a contact for them in case things go wrong.

Sheboygan & Esslingen: Partners since 1967
Credit: M

Since I was recently in Esslingen with this year's group of three, the idea came to me to write a "Then & Now" post about the exchange experience. Much has changed in those 31 years.

Photography

I haven't seen this year's students take many photos yet, but I suspect they are using their smart phones. I use my digital camera, and I can transfer them to my laptop and upload them to our Facebook group the same day. The parents in Sheboygan can see photos of their kids the same day they were taken.

In 1986 I not only used a film camera, but I took mostly slides. In order to look at my pictures from back then, I need to find a slide projector and a big screen or an empty white wall. In order to see my pictures or slides while on the exchange, I had to first take 24 pictures without being able to see whether they were any good or not, bring my used film rolls to a camera shop, wait three days for the developing, and pay (I don't remember how much - 20 Marks?). Only then could I see if the photos had turned out or were blurry.

Communication

When the kids choose to (and apparently they don't choose to often enough to suit their parents), they can send a short message over Facebook or other social media, or send an email to their parents, either of which the parents will receive the minute they wake up. We have a Facebook group where students, host parents, and parents can post messages or photos, and I imagine they all send SMS (text messages) with their fancy smart phones.

Back in my day...(you know you're getting old when you start saying that!) I wrote letters to my friends and family and mailed them. There was no internet, no Skype, phoning was too expensive, and there were no mobile phones. My letters and postcards took 5-7 days to get to Wisconsin, and if the recipient wrote back immediately, I would get a reply 6-8 days later. So we're talking two weeks between "How are you doing?!" and "Fine thanks, how are YOU?!" By the time I received a reply, I'd forgotten what I'd written!

To give them a sense of "what it was like in my day,"
I had them write postcards to mail home to Sheboygan.

I asked my host parents if I could call my best friend on her birthday, which of course they let me do. I don't know how long we talked, but afterwards I told my host mom to tell me what I owe her when the bill comes. She just quietly said, "That's ok. You wouldn't be able to afford that." Yikes!  I also got a call one morning from home. My parents called to tell me that the U.S. had bombed Libya during the night, and I should know that before being confronted by it in school. I didn't even know where the hell Libya was back then.

Berlin

In 1986 my group (seven of us from Sheboygan) traveled with our chaperone to Berlin for five days. Berlin was still divided then, and there was no indication that it would ever be otherwise. One day we went over to East Berlin - through the underground checkpoint at Friedrichsstraße - had to change 25 German Marks for 25 nearly worthless East German Marks, and were warned that we needed to get the hell out before midnight if we didn't want to have problems at the border.  Another day we peeked over the barricade at the Brandenburger Tor and walked along the graffiti-covered Berliner Mauer to one of several outlook platforms. We went to the Museum at Checkpoint Charlie which focused on escape attempts and successes, we attended an evening operetta, and we spent a sunny afternoon at the Wannsee, where the lads among us ventured into the FKK section - where they were easily pegged as the Americans because they were the only ones with "a white zone".

Last year I accompanied the same chaperone (who is now my Schwiegermutter) as her assistant with the group of four Americans. The wall is gone though there's a trail through the city that shows where it was, we could walk right through the Brandenburger Tor, the hub of the city is now in what was East Berlin, and the Ku'Damm, where we had stayed in 1986 and again last year, is nearly dead (compared to the bustling Western central it was in 1986). We roamed freely around the city making use of the underground, which was only functioning in the West back in my day. In order to give the students an idea of what life in Berlin was like with the wall, we visited the Asisi Panorama as well as Bernauerstraße, where there is a viewing platform over a reconstruction of the wall, the barbed wire, the mine field on the east side and a guard tower.

We also visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which opened to the public in 2005.

Language

When I was in high school, it was still common for Americans to learn a foreign language. I remember a decent enrollment in my German classes, and all four Sheboygan high schools - North, South, Lutheran and Christian High - offered German. It made (and would still make) sense because there are many families with German roots in Wisconsin. I didn't knock anyone's socks off with my expert German-speaking skills, but at least I had the opportunity to learn it for several years before coming to Esslingen.

Nowadays due to budget cuts, foreign languages other than Spanish are a rarity in Wisconsin schools. I know of one German teacher who teaches in both public high schools, but both private schools have cut German. Last year's group of Sheboygan students had had virtually no German before the exchange, so our classroom lessons consisted mainly of learning basic conversation. This year all three have had some German (between several months of an online course and three years in the classroom), so we were able to do some grammar as well as conversation and vocabulary building.

It frustrates me no end that world languages get cut so easily and quickly in American schools. Sure, they are electives, but if we want to be part of a global society, we need to learn more about other languages and cultures, not less. 

Applicants

In the year I applied for the exchange there were fourteen applicants from local German classes who wanted to spend six months in Esslingen! Seven of us were chosen, and we had a great time together. I don't think there were ever that many applicants again, but back in those days there were surely more than there have been recently. As I said, since 2002 there have been several years when no one at all applied from Sheboygan, and in the years when there have been applicants, there have been usually just two or three. 

There are always applicants in Esslingen - part of the education program in German Gymnasien (college-track high schools) focuses on world languages and opportunities to travel to France, Greece, England, Spain, Italy... even in the younger grades as class trips. But for most students in the U.S. it seems friends and sports are more important than exploring the world independently. Of course, the flight overseas is not cheap, and that presents another huge obstacle. One of the current students mentioned college preparations and the ACT test as a reason students don't want to miss half of their 11th grade, and that's surely a weighty reason. It's possible to get around that, though, as one of the other students - an 11th grader - is proving. Where there's a will, there's a way.

Journaling

The final big "then & now" difference that has occurred to me is the way students have kept record of their time abroad. I kept a hand-written journal, which I still have on my bookshelf and consider an important possession. Every now and then I pull it out to read what I was doing this day 31 years ago. There are many events and incidents I would have forgotten about had I not written that journal.

Today students can keep an online journal - a blog! - as one of ours is doing. It's a great way to combine journaling and communicating with friends and family back home, killing two flies with one swat, as the Germans say ("zwei Fliegen mit einer Klappe schlagen"). 

I am really proud of the exchange students we have had since I got involved with the program, who have broken out of their comfort zones and ventured to a foreign country where the local language is not their own. I would like to see exchange programs - especially the Sheboygan-Esslingen exchange - flourish again in the coming years as they once did. Students all around the world want to travel to the U.S., and I would like to see more young Americans get out and experience the world as more than tourists.

Highs and Lows July 2016

The early edition...

I haven't written much lately because I'm busy with teaching and failing at keeping the homestead in good shape. I've had things to say/write, but little energy to write them well, so instead I spend my evenings creating lesson plans and worksheets, reviewing the passive voice, and lying on the sofa with my cold fluffy pillow watching "the Mentalist" or "Big Bang Theory".

However, as always there were highs and lows this month, and I like reflecting at the end of the month on what's been going on - especially the positive things.

HIGHS

• the C1 (Deutsch als Fremdsprache / German as a Foreign Language) test. It was a good experience, and I passed it!!


• meeting a college friend of mine and three colleagues of his in Esslingen and giving them a tour of my favorite German city! It was my first official tour of Esslingen and so much fun! They were interested in what I had to tell them, were very enthusiastic about the places and views I showed them, and if they enjoyed it half as much as I did, then it was a near-perfect evening.


• the arrival in Esslingen of four young exchange students from Sheboygan, WI (my hometown).


• chaperoning this group and their German partners on a day trip to Ulm and leading the "Stadtführung Lite". They all joined me on the climb up the tallest church steeple in the world, and most of them went all the way to the tippy-top  (768 steps) while I waited at the third lookout platform.

The students climbed this; I did not.

• my daughter's 23rd birthday

• my son's 21st birthday three days later


• another day trip with the student group to Tübingen, my second favorite German city.

• seeing two of my former students at a film showing about Syria: before and since the war. I sat next to one of them, and during the "before" part it was so nice to hear him talk about his homeland. When a picture came up, he leaned over and told me what it was I was seeing. The "since" portion was heart-breaking, though.


• finding out that in August I might be able to take over an integration course at the local VHS from a teacher who is going on family leave. The best part about this is that two of my former students are in this class, along with two other Syrians I know from another class at the Hermann-Hesse-Kolleg and the Sprachcafé! I am just waiting for official permission to teach at the VHS level.


• in preparation for the above, taking a practice Einbürgerungstest (German citizenship test) and scoring 90% on my first try before starting to study. 56% is needed to pass. I just took that online practice test and scored 93%. Those darn colors pertaining to various political parties will get me every time - except for the Green party; I nailed that one.  The other wrong answer was a stupid misread of the question.
  
  Want to try your hand at the US Citizenship test? That one has 96 questions, so it will take a few minutes. I scored 92%. Here's a shorter one. Apparently the actual test is not multiple choice, but rather an oral test. The candidate is asked 10 questions, and she or he must answer at least six of them correctly.
  
  The pool of questions for the US test is 100 (from which the interviewer asks 10). The pool of questions for the German test is 310, from which 33 are asked (the last three are state-specific), and 17 need to be answered correctly.
  
  Back in 2008, all 310 questions appeared in the newspaper, and M copied the list and sent it to me. I still have this list, so handy that it took me less than two minutes to find it! It was one of those "I bet I'll need this some day" things, and sure enough.

my study material for the next few weeks
Update: I finished this book/workbook today.

• receiving an email from one of my former Syrian students. He was just checking in and letting me know what he's been doing lately, about the integration class he's taking, and asked how I was. It's always so nice to hear from these students!

LOWS

• the shooting in München on my daughter's birthday. Although this happens so often in the US that it hardly makes the news anymore, this type of crime is rare in Germany because the gun laws are quite strict. The shooter (an 18-year-old German-Iranian boy who had trouble in school and presumed psychological problems) had been researching mass shootings and acquired his weapon illegally - the serial number was scratched off. It also turns out that, despite knee-jerk reports that he was Muslim and shouted "Allah...", it now appears that he was a racist neo-nazi (I'm not going to capitalize that) who hated foreigners and Muslims.


• finishing our tour of Ulm and arriving in plenty of time at the Bahnhof to catch our train back to Esslingen, and seeing on the schedule display that our train wasn't running that day. Why? No idea, no information. Waiting another hour for the next train.


• the Republican convention, though this could be a high because most of what I watched about it was from late night comedy, and those guys are hilarious. I just didn't hear anything about or from the convention that could be viewed as positive. Hatred, paralyzing fear, the economy is in the toilet, and the world is going to hell - those are the messages I heard. I read something the other day about the dire state of the economy - the writer advised people to turn off the news, go outside and look around their neighborhoods and cities. Where is the evidence of the economic crisis? Are houses being built? Are gas prices low? Are people still driving SUVs? Are businesses advertising "Help Wanted"? Are people still loading carts full at the grocery store? Shopping in malls? Going on vacation?


• learning on the day of the film showing about Syria that the US had had dropped bombs on and killed several families - more than 50 people - near the town of Aleppo, having mistakenly identified them as IS fighters.


• reading a news story about a former student of mine from my first year of teaching at my last school in Wisconsin. I remember him well. He was one of the participants on my first trip to Germany with teenage students (17 of them!), and he was one of the good ones - great sense of humor, well-behaved, and just generally nice and thoughtful. I learned this month that he committed a heinous crime in Virginia - attacking a couple (the husband had just fired my former student's wife), slashing their throats, and leaving them for dead. He was apprehended and tried, and he was sentenced to 2 life terms in prison. How does a kind, funny, thoughtful, intelligent kid from a Christian family end up there 15 years after high school?
  
  I wrote a blog post about it but just couldn't publish it.

Since I don't like ending with negative things, I will close with this fat little brown bunny with floppy ears (Schlappohren) in a teacup.

Have a great August!!

Life Lately

I enjoy the "Life Lately" posts of Adventitious Violet, which she posts periodically, and since I know I don't have time to sit down for a thought-provoking post about travel or differences between Wisconsin and Swabia, I thought I'd write one of these over coffee this morning so readers know I haven't disappeared.

I've been working every day (though not even close to full-time) and studying for the C1 German test coming up on July 1st, and that means it's harder to indulge in an afternoon nap. Our house is in disarray, the garden is as unruly as a teenager on Red Bull, M has all but taken over cooking, and that best-seller I've been imagining in my mind for upwards of 35 years has still not been written. Of course, I waste an embarrassing amount of time checking Facebook and CNN, but at least M blocked Fox News from our Network (at my request) so I can no longer get outraged at the comments sections of articles. I've been totally neglecting my parents despite knowing my mom enjoys getting an email from me in the morning, and my list of "to do" is much longer than my list of "have done".

Basically, since I have the same 24 hours that everyone else has in a day, I have no excuse for the current state of affairs, and during my afternoon nap today I'm definitely going to conjure up a plan to get back on top of things.

Since I'm on my second cup of coffee, though, I'd better get going on Life Lately...

Teaching

I am still teaching the Englisch-AG to students with mild learning disabilities twice a week, though this will be my last year. I'm just so much happier teaching adults, even though I really like the kids in that class. Half of them "graduate" in July because this school only goes to the ninth grade.

Four days a week, Tuesday to Friday, I teach basic German at the Hermann-Hesse-Kolleg. I've had four students, whom I briefly wrote about a few posts ago, but yesterday the woman from the Ukraine had her last day and Tuesday is the last day for the woman from Japan. The school director told me that I'll probably gain a few new students next week, so we'll see what happens.

Last week I mentioned Esslingen and how beautiful it is, and we decided to take a class trip there this coming Tuesday! I'll give them an informal Stadtführung (city tour), we'll have lunch, we'll walk up to the Burg, and we'll bask in the beauty of my favorite German city.

Learning

As I mentioned, I'll be taking a German language test (C1 level) on July 1st. I have found several practice tests and activities online, and my results have not been impressive. I never properly learned the passive voice or indirect discourse, so I've been studying those especially. What I really need to focus on is expanding my vocabulary and the subtle changes in meaning when a verb is coupled with a different preposition, for example: bestehen aus vs. bestehen in. I'm now working on a book I've had for a while but left on the shelf - Weg mit den typischen Fehlern! (Avoiding Typical Mistakes) - and wishing I had started it the day I learned I'd be taking this test.

Traveling

I already wrote about parts of my trip last month to visit my daughter in Philadelphia. Not long after I returned, my Schwiegermutter and I accompanied four American exchange students from my hometown, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, to Berlin for four days. They were a great group, very interested, spoke plenty of German, and we had a very good trip. We saw everything we could see in that short time, and sometime after my test I'll probably do a blog post about it.

das Brandenburger Tor made of chocolate at
Fassbender & Rausch Chocolatier
The sign says "no touching", but it doesn't say a thing about licking!

Reading

Besides grammar books and the local newspaper, I've been reading a book I bought in Berlin about the wall as well as Einwanderung und Asyl: die 101 wichtigsten Fragen (Immigration and Asylum: the 101 most important questions). Irgendwo in  Deutschland, the sequel to Nirgendwo in Afrika, has been at my bedside for months, and I am making very slow progess in that one.

Cooking

As I type this, M has another hunk of meat in his sous vide jacuzzi, which has been in there since Thursday evening. Tonight we're having BBQ spare ribs with a sauce that is so insanely delcious that I've been putting it on everything but cereal. It absolutely lives up to its name:

We still have to decide what we're having with the ribs. If I want my daughter to be impressed, it has to be something other than potatoes.  Update: it was fries and cole slaw. See below.

And there they are, with homemade Krautsalat.
They were decadent.

Watching

The EM games, of course, or at least the ones involving the German team. I've fallen behind in what we affectionally call my "Scottish porn" (Outlander; it's not really porn, but a historical romance that gets a bit racey at times) because I lost interest in the second season when the setting was in France rather than in Scotland.

Our other regulars are "the Mentalist", "Big Bang Theory", any and all quiz shows, and "die Rosenheim Cops". Although the first two are American shows, we watch them in German because that's how they're aired on TV. M watches all kinds of other strange shows on the Man Channel (DMAX), which I try to tune out while studying German grammar.

Missing

My 25th college reunion is going on this weekend in Appleton, Wisconsin (USA). My former classmates are posting lots of photos on Facebook, and it's embarrassing how many people I don't remember well. It was and is a small college, after all. I suppose if I hadn't got married in my second year, I would have spent more time on campus and with my classmates. I think what's going on is that the classmates with whom I was really close are also not attending. By "missing" I don't mean I wish I were there, but rather I am not attending because I'm just too far away.

Socializing

Since I'm in town for teaching nearly every day, I run into my former students and other Syrians I have met through the HHK and the Sprachcafé at least once a week. It is always a pleasure to see them, and they greet me warmly, even from afar as they wait for their bus and I'm dashing past to pick up more Bergkäse from Aldi. Usually we have time for at least a brief chat.

A German teacher friend of mine from Colorado is in the area, and we'll be meeting next weekend! It will be nice to get together for the first time since 2012, and M and I are looking forward to it.

Writing

Yesterday I met one of my former students for several hours so he could tell me about his story - his life in Syria and Lebanon before the war, his journey to Germany when he decided he had to leave, and his life here since arriving nine months ago. I will be talking to as many refugees as want to share their stories with me, and I am writing about them. I am not entirely sure what the end product will be, but at the very least they and I will have a written account of what they have gone through. Their stories need to be shared.

That's what I've been up to lately, for those who might have wondered. But now my coffee is finished, and I best get back to preparing for my test! We also have plans to get some yard work done today. The hedge is getting out of control!

Have a great weekend!

one of our Rhododendrons a few weeks ago
They're all finished blooming now and ready for beheading.